


three second rule

by mudkip



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:18:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mudkip/pseuds/mudkip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Go to sleep, Bruce. I'll be gone by morning."</p>
            </blockquote>





	three second rule

The bed dips at three in the morning and Bruce wakes up, blinking sleep out of his eyes wearily as Dick arranges the covers around himself.

"You're not in Chicago," he says, rough voice grinding its way out of a scratchy throat. Harsh, like gunshots at night, like bodies on hard gravel, like Batman with a sore throat.

"Not tonight," Dick tells him, steady and earnest and sincere.

Bruce can't bear to look at him - not when seeing the only thing he ever did right reminds him of everything he did wrong. So when Dick reaches for him, to pull them together in a parody of an embrace, he does the one thing he can, the one thing he's always done. 

He pushes him away.

If Dick notices the trembles and tremors that run up his fingers, his wrists, the bunched-up muscles of his shoulders, he doesn't say it.

"Go to sleep, Bruce," he says instead, drawing arms back towards himself, "I'll be gone by morning."

 _Don't,_ he would answer, if he wasn't _the_ Batman - stoic, unemotional and falling apart. But he is, so he doesn’t; he holds his words tight, reins in his emotions, and stays awake throughout the night.

**Author's Note:**

> first batfic after a seven-month-long writing funk ldskfj bruce is rly difficult to write?? idk sobs /PUNCHES HIS STUPID FACE
> 
> (beta'd by patroclus ty bb ilu ;_; ♥)


End file.
